What I liked about the mornings was the racket that the birds made before dawn, screeching and singing away so close by. There was only a tent’s thickness of fabric to muffle the sound. I found it reassuring. An estimated one billion animals were killed in the inferno-like fires that have been ravaging our east coast over the past two months, but in this pocket at least, these birds were still alive and kicking.
We had a lovely family Christmas at Maggie’s house involving a table tennis tournament and magic tricks as well as a long and heaving table full of meats, fish and salads, followed by both Christmas cake and home-made icy poles, perfect for a perfect day. Then we drove off to Anglesea the next day and our holiday there was full of the usual beach, arthouse, Nippers, running, reading, sleeping in, late family dinners and various treats that we enjoy every summer. I wanted to explore more this year though, so we organized a couple of nights in the Port Fairy campground which was a four hour drive away, and I also arranged with my cousin Jessie that we’d go to her in Geelong instead of meeting up at the beach as usual. A couple of slight twists to the usual routine.
While our town was thickly blanketed in smoke, making it the most polluted city in the world for some days, with levels more than 10 times over hazardous levels, accompanied by forty degree days one after the other, we winded our way under clear blue skies and mild weather through lush rainforest beside the Great Ocean Road. We stopped at the Twelve Apostles and London Bridge, both of which I had never seen, and it was windswept and magnificent, like a Van Gough painting in its ochres and blues. The coastline stretched on and on and the water was sparkling and blue. Stopping by the side of the road where four or five cars full of people were peering up a tree, we saw not one but two koalas sleeping only a couple of metres from the ground, one a very cuddly-looking baby.
I had also never been to Port Fairy, though I’d been quite captivated by its name and had had an interest in seeing it one day after picking fruit in Mildura for a week when I was twenty with a hardworking young man who was from there. I had been in the shade and he in the sun one very hot morning and he fainted with heatstroke. I was impressed by his work ethic though. It was bone-crushing work.
Anyway, Port Fairy was picturesque and the girls were excited to be camping for the first time with us since they were two-and-a-half (though they camped with Maggie at Depot Beach last year). We had borrowed a huge tent from Penny and Pierre and we assembled it carefully. Though the tent was great, it turned out to be pretty uncomfortable because one of the sleeping mats had a leak and was completely ineffective and another was an unforgiving foam, but Rhea and Lara didn’t mind. We cooked our pesto and pasta the first night in the camp kitchen just outside our tent, conveniently located across from the playground where the girls joined in with other camp kids. The girls were a bit sorry that they didn’t have bikes like many of the other kids who were with families which had set themselves up for weeks. There were even pop up stalls selling pancakes, pizzas, coffee and Thai food which appeared on particular days, reminiscent of the top of the Faraway Tree. And it wasn’t even very hot.
The girls snorkeled and swam at the nearby beach (Pea Soup, though it didn’t live up to its name); we had a huge brunch in town one day, explored a sculpture garden attached to a café, and sat outside on the main street eating pizza and chatting to other travelers at the communal table. On the second day Í suggested that we should go camping once a year. ‘Can we go two or three times a year?,’ asked Lara.
In Geelong a few days later, the girls and I arrived at our uncle’s house just minutes before Jessie and her girls did at dinner time. We all unloaded our contributions to dinner and took over the kitchen with his partner Noreen, who had brough a roast chicken and potatoes and chocolate cake for dessert. Jessie’s youngest girls are six and nearly eight, and they and our girls were excited to have arrived and to have cousins to play with. They ran up and down the stairs, jumped and threw cushions around the upstairs dining room, and generally had a great time until we sat down to dinner. After dinner they all unwrapped their Christmas presents from Noreen: teddies and pandas that you name and stuff yourself.
They loved them. Then all the girls had a bit of an impromptu piano concert on my uncle’s piano in the loungeroom upstairs while my uncles watched TV downstairs: one had some music that I have been learning, and Jessie’s Jana played the pieces she had been learning too, with Lara and Rhea playing a bit also. The girls and I slept in the loungeroom and awoke to more excitement in the morning, after they had all climbed the staircase on the outside of the railing and Jessie managed to hustle them out of the door, accompanying her and her girls to their sailing camp which began that day.
While they were at camp, we did some shopping with Jessie and her dad, who lives there on and off, then visited a well-reviewed playground; a ferris wheel by the sea; and tried to explore the newly-opened Museum of Play and Art that I had stumbled on in a local newspaper, but it was closed. Then Jessie, her father, the girls and I all went to visit my aunt in the suburbs, who I last saw when the girls were six months old.
Nine years is quite a long time not to have seen somebody. We age in such a time, especially if we have had a hard life. My aunt was in the early stages of using a walker and had difficulty hearing me, but she was the same person, expressing delight in her singing Rudolph toy, telling us her osteoarthritis was painful and she was on the waiting list to have a hip replacement as well as having all her teeth replaced soon. The girls had been looking forward to meeting Grandma’s sister and I watched Rhea watching her closely as she laughed at the musical toy. Then Jessie and the girls connected the snake-sprinkler hose along the driveway garden outside her tiny ground floor unit and she was hugely grateful and happy.
Our aunt asked how old the girls were and how often we come to Geelong. The reply was that we never come, at least that means that we haven’t been in active avoidance of her. But I felt bad that I haven’t visited for so long. She talked of feeling often lonely (her husband died some years ago). It wouldn’t have cost me much to visit, as Jessie always does, and she delighted in the company of the girls. Before we left, Jessie showed Rhea and Lara a photo of our grandparents, pointing out that our grandfather looked a bit like Jessie’s father and our grandmother looked a bit like our aunt. The girls agreed.
Back in Anglesea, driving no more than 30km/h to the massage that Steve kindly bought for me as a Christmas present, a wallaby sprang across the road from a garden, chased by a dog, and I hit it briefly. In a matter of moments the dog attacked the wallaby and its owners ran out to separate them, pulling the dog off the kangaroo’s throat. I didn’t see any blood but the wallaby’s eyes stayed open and it breathed for a while then ceased to move. Driving along behind me, my brother-in-law stopped and pulled the animal to the side of the road. The dog owners were joined by some other neighbours and we discussed what had happened briefly, then I kept going.
When I returned a couple of hours later, the wallaby was gone. I like to think it was just stunned and recovered, hopping away itself. My brother-in-law thought it was definitely dead.
